


Lambency

by legendarydesvender (svensationalist)



Series: Klance Week 2k16 [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 5+1 Things, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 06:49:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7674277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/svensationalist/pseuds/legendarydesvender
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s something satisfying in seeing the same ugly feeling mirrored on Lance’s face whenever they meet.  Even after Keith is expelled from the Garrison, he tells himself that the feeling is hatred and not envy.</p><p>***</p><p>Written for klanceweek day 2, “Love/Hate”.  Five times that Keith hates Lance, and one time he admits that he doesn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lambency

**Author's Note:**

> Never wrote a 5+1 fic before, so I figured I’d start with something a bit lighthearted. I tried experimenting with pacing a bit, hopefully this fic still makes sense ahaha. It was inspired by the song "Landfill" by Daughter, though I didn’t end up including it anywhere; you can listen to it here if you want: http://youtu.be/OpWO_byqSr8
> 
> Content warnings: Spoilers for season 1. Cussing.  
> Character notes: Keith is asexual; Lance is bisexual and has ADHD. Feel free to headcanon anything else.

**lam·bent**

ˈlambənt/

 _adjective;_ _literary_

(of light or fire) glowing, gleaming, or flickering with a soft radiance.

 

* * *

 

_sparks_

 

Keith looks around the room. A part of him is disappointed that Shiro is wrong. The older man said that being among like-minded individuals would make Keith feel like he belongs somewhere. He’s in a sea of new faces dressed in the same orange and white uniforms, but he still feels alone. It’s nothing new; it’s mildly disheartening nonetheless.

There is a chorus of laughter near the windows, and Keith sees a small crowd surrounding a boy perched on a desk. He’s made of animated limbs and too much noise, and Keith catches himself frowning more than usual. He can’t figure out why, but the other cadet irritates him.

“C’mon Lance, bet you five bucks you can’t do it!” another person yells.

Lance has the textbook definition of a shit-eating grin on his face. “Watch me!” Then he springs from the desk, doing a backflip midair before sticking the landing. He looks as stunned as his audience before his face returns to being cocky. “Gimme that five!” he crows triumphantly, thrusting his arm out towards his challenger.

Something in Keith burns, low in his gut, when more people flock to the reckless idiot. It rekindles whenever he sees Lance over the next few months, an uncomfortable simmer that bothers him every time the loudmouth brags to his friends, every time people laugh with him despite his relatively lacklustre performance in the program. It twists and evolves whenever Keith hears people giving him empty praises as the top pilot, or sees the distant admiration on classmates’ faces, or fails at keeping a conversation alive on the rare occasion someone bothers to speak to him.

There’s something satisfying in seeing the same ugly feeling mirrored on Lance’s face whenever they meet. Even after Keith is expelled from the Garrison, he tells himself that the feeling is hatred and not envy.

 

* * *

 

_burning bridges_

 

The forcefield around the blue robotic lion lowers at Lance’s touch, and Keith quietly grinds his teeth. He thought he was free of the jealous anger, _enjoyed_ the freedom. It was one of the only benefits to living alone in a desert.

Keith felt some petty satisfaction earlier, when Lance’s face twisted into annoyance after a lie. (Of _course_ he remembers Lance, but something in him refuses to acknowledge that out loud.) But that only fuels the anger more, because Keith hates being petty, hates how it’s so easy for that idiot to get under his skin within _seconds_ of reuniting. His victory was short-lived anyway; it soured slightly when Lance reminded him of his lost opportunity to become a fighter pilot. Keith wrapped himself in sarcasm and the relief that Shiro was alive, and sped off a cliff to put some of the burning restlessness and resentment inside him to good use.

(It also made Lance scream like he was about to piss himself, and Keith’s lips curled into a smile without him noticing.)

But now there's a yawning pit in Keith's stomach, because his months of hard work and endless research end in _Lance’s_ favour. He feels disappointment and disgust and despair tangling together inside his furiously beating heart. Many things come easily to Keith, but a sense of belonging and purpose always feels out of reach. And once again, Lance unceremoniously and effortlessly takes the former, and now the latter too.

“You’re the worst pilot _ever_!” Keith shouts as Lance recklessly flies the blue lion, knowing that he’s being petty again and maybe poking at sore spots he shouldn’t. But he never makes wise decisions when he feels like his anger is tearing through him like a forest fire. Right now, he just wants Lance to feel the same way he does.

Keith promises himself that he’ll care less later, when aliens aren’t trying to kill them.

 

* * *

 

_ashes, ashes, we all fall down_

 

Lance is very, very still.

Keith hates it. He hates the small crease of pain in Lance’s forehead despite being in a healing pod; hates the blood and bruises covering the boy’s body because of the bomb; hates the fear he felt when the Castle shook, when the smoke cleared to reveal someone half-dead; hates the panic when he was at the Arusian village, too far from where he was meant to be; hates the powerlessness while he and Allura were trapped outside the particle barrier as Lance was dying.

Above all, Keith hates the way one guileless sentence made his stomach drop and face burn so hotly he wondered if Lance could feel the heat through their intertwined fingers.

“I hate you,” Keith declares to his unconscious audience, not meaning it at all.

 

* * *

 

 (“I _hate_ you,” Keith says, throwing his hands in the air in frustration as Lance laughs his shitty laugh and playfully denies their ‘bonding moment’ again, and again, and again.)

 

_(... why don't you rem)ember?_

 

* * *

 

  _warm coals_

 

“Did you hear anything I said?” Keith asks, sighing in exasperation when Lance’s head jerks to look at him.

At least Lance has the grace to look sheepish about his inattention. “N-No, sorry. Can you repeat that?”

Months ago, Keith knows he would’ve refused. Now he just feels mildly irritated, and then nothing. “I was just asking if you’re okay,” he mutters, looking off to the side. “You seem more distracted than usual.”

“Aww~” Lance presses a hand to his chest dramatically, pretending to swoon backwards. “Somewhere in that mullet is a _heart_.”

“Stop that,” Keith snaps, glaring as his temper flares. “It’s fine if you don’t want to answer, but don’t fucking _do_ that. You know that I hate it.”

Lance lets his hand drop to his side. “What should I do then?” His voice sounds dull and sullen, and it feels more alien to Keith than anything they’ve seen in outer space so far. “Tell _you_ my problems? I don’t even like you.”

“The feeling is mutual,” Keith says dryly. The lie is something familiar and he uses it as an anchor. “But we’re still teammates, so I’m allowed to be a little concerned when the Gladiator almost decapitates you during training.”

Lance stuffs his hands in his jacket pockets as if trying to keep them in place. “There’s nothing anyone can do to help me, really,” he admits quietly. “I keep having nightmares of the airlock. It wasn’t like the time with the bomb — I didn’t really, uh, think about much before I blew up.”

(“I thought not-thinking-much was your default state,” Keith says, raising an eyebrow. He dodges the half-hearted punch aimed his way.)

“The airlock was different.” Lance frowns, forehead wrinkling between his eyebrows, and Keith looks away because it reminds him of Lance’s face while unconscious in a healing pod. “I thought I was going to die. I-I’d die in space because of a stupid mistake, and nobody would know I was gone, and there wouldn’t even be a body to send h-home to my family. It turned out okay, but… but it was still fucking terrifying when I didn’t _know_ it’d be okay.”

Keith looks at Lance again; the other paladin looks tired beyond just sleep deprivation, and it makes something inside him twist unpleasantly. He doesn't know what to say that isn't an empty comfort, eventually settling with “I’m sorry that I didn't show up earlier”; he’s surprised that he means it.

“What? Dude, it’s not your fault. Honestly I’m just glad you were there at all. I think that was the happiest I ever was to see you, ha.” Lance attempts a smile but it becomes more like a grimace. “Actually, I... don’t think I ever thanked you for saving me, so uh. Thanks. For not letting me get sucked into space. That would've sucked.  Uh, pun intended.  Yeah.”

Keith snorts. “You’re welcome. Don’t do that again.”

“Not planning on it. _Someone_ needs to keep pissing you off.” Lance laughs quietly, and it’s not as bright as usual, but it’s better than nothing.

(Keith files the sound away in his memory anyway.)

 

* * *

 

  _rekindle_

 

Keith looks around the hangar. He isn’t disappointed. All his friends scramble over to reach him once he’s out of the red lion, everyone shouting too excitedly for him to understand what they’re saying, but he understands their intent. A smile grows on his face; after weeks and weeks of being alone and stranded in space, he’s finally back to the closest thing he can call a home and a family.

“What are you so smug about?” Keith asks Lance a little while later when it’s only the two of them left in the hangar. He idly wonders where the others went, but he decides he’ll figure it out after talking to the blue paladin. Maybe it’s because Lance never shut up before, but Keith missed hearing his loud voice the most when everyone was separated by the wormhole.

“I got back to the Castle before you,” Lance says, smirking triumphantly.

“Congratulations, you finally beat me at something.” Keith’s mouth twitches at Lance’s offended gawking. “That’s one out of how many now?”

“ _Excuse_ me, I’ve beaten you at all sorts of things before!” Lance splutters, face reddening a bit and arms flapping. Apparently some things don’t change, because he’s still made of animated limbs and too much noise like when they first met.

Keith thinks it’s endearing, but it's not going to stop him from being a shithead. “Sorry, you’re right. You beat me at a lot of things. You were the first paladin to annoy Allura, the first paladin to end up in a healing pod, the first paladin to pass out from trying Nunvill, the first paladin to get handcuffed to an alien tree —”

Lance groans in embarrassment.

“— adin to trip and knock himself out on Shiro’s robot arm —”

“That was _one_ time! One! His arm is made of _metal_ and _space magic_ , okay?”

Keith laughs, and it’s the first one he’s created in a month. “Should I list more of your victories?”

“Holy shit, let me _live_ , stop fucking teasing me, you _asshole_.” Lance crosses his arms, red-faced and clearly sulking. “You’ve been back, like, ten minutes and you’re already lording things over me. I hate you.”

“No you don’t,” Keith says, instinctively knowing that he’s right.

Lance turns even redder. After a pause, he mumbles, “Yeah, I don’t. And you don’t hate me.”

It’s the truth; Keith stopped genuinely disliking Lance so long ago he doesn’t even remember when it happened. Keith nods, and is startled when Lance hugs him. He thinks he hears ‘I missed you, dumbass’ from somewhere behind his right ear, so he says, “I missed you too.”

There’s something satisfying in seeing the same smile mirrored on Lance’s face when they pull apart from their hug. Keith doesn’t know what to call the new warm feeling in his gut yet, but he thinks he’ll like it.

(“We had a bonding moment,” Lance quotes, eyebrows wiggling ridiculously. “I cradled you in my arms.”

“Shut up, you’re ruining it.”)

 

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to chat with me on twitter @legdesvender and/or tumblr @legendarydesvender! Thanks so much for reading!


End file.
